


Window

by TheSushiMonster



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 13:09:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1471009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSushiMonster/pseuds/TheSushiMonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He inhales deeply, still half-curled into himself, as if trying to hold broken pieces together.  “I need you to keep whatever happened between us.”" Fitz runs to May to keep a secret, but Jemma knows anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [owlvsdove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlvsdove/gifts).



> Post-1x17 “Turn Turn Turn”. Technically takes place after a Fitzmay drabble I wrote on a quick edit, but it’s not necessary to read that first.

When they fly over the pacific, Melinda leans back and closes her eyes. Her fingers tense around still air, but she forces them to stretch out. With a sigh, she straightens.

“You can come in,” she says, her eyes still closed. The blackness calms her, so differential from the swirls that tangle in her chest. Anger, guilt, sadness, helplessness – they scratch and claw and squeeze, but Melinda just wants to sleep.

But she has a job to do. “I just wanted to ask you a favor,” says Fitz. She glances towards him for a second, catching his hunched back and crossed arms, the way he chews his lip. “I – can you – I – “ He inhales deeply, still half-curled into himself, as if trying to hold broken pieces together. “I need you to keep whatever happened between us.” He pauses, choked air swallowed harshly. “Please,” he says, voice shattered, and her heart pounds.

Melinda raises an eyebrow. He’s scratching at his skin, dirt caked under his nails, sweat still dried on his face. Even though he’s facing her, squared shoulders and set jaw, his eyes see through her to the shadows dressing the cabin, slowly dancing in the cool. Melinda waits a moment, letting the image of Fitz cowering under a desk and flinching away from metal poison recede. “I won’t say anything,” she says, eyes open and directly upon him. He won’t look at her. “And thank you.”

“It was – “

“It wasn’t nothing, or else you wouldn’t be asking me not to tell Simmons,” says Melinda, the quirk of her lips escaping her control. “She’d understand, for the record.”

Fitz shakes his head, foot bouncing and eyebrows furrowed. “I know she would, Agent May,” he says, his loud voice harsh against the quiet drum of the engines. “That’s the problem.”

She doesn’t think it is, but says nothing; her ledger is already filled with blood and bones and ashes. Now betrayal populates the list, written in strong scrawls and hidden under masks of restricted access. But Melinda knows the team – _her_ team – so she nods. “Okay.”

Fitz stays for three more seconds, and it’s in that time that his eyes meet hers: the ice melts slowly, tears frozen to his cheeks and heart and feet. But his teeth bite down on his tongue and when his nose wrinkles just slightly, Melinda smiles. And he leaves, shuffling his feet in a straight line.

* * *

While searching for him, Jemma peers into what is left of Fitz’s bunk. A circle of shattered glass and scattered debris surround an empty space and Jemma imagines him embracing his knees, curly hair stuck to his forehead and fingers tapping against his ripped jeans. He’d be rocking back and forth, eyes hollow, waiting.

But the room is empty and the tips of Jemma’s finger tingle against the bullet holes that dot the cracked frame sitting on the floor. She refuses to look at the laser black that pierces their intercrossed arms. Even as she turns, she swallows, fighting back sepia memories. They are both alive and whole and merely separated temporarily.

Jemma finds Fitz in the lab, of course. He hunches over a magnifying glass, studying metallic, lethal toys, a single tear sliced down the arm of his cardigan. Her fingers lightly graze the torn seam, but even when her cool skin merely lingers above him, he flinches back, eyes wide in horror.

Her heart breaks all at once, blood seeping through her pounding jaw and out her cracked lips, pooling in her wide eyes. Fitz blinks, steeling internally, so he looks more statue than man, carved from marble and not from flesh. “Hey,” he says.

“You ripped your cardigan,” she says, braving another rejection to have her fingers near to him. This time he stiffens under her touch, but remains still. His eyes stick to gadgets and metal but even as Jemma concentrates on the tiny cuts on his arm, she knows the corner of his gaze observes her movements. “I couldn’t find you.”

“I’ve been here the entire time,” he says. It worries her that only because her breath mingles with his ears and hair that she can read the lies written between the wrinkles in his back. Whether he notices her frown, he remains firm.

“May said you were in your room,” she says. _Lie_ , she almost says out loud as well, but instead she swallows the final syllable. The hitch in her breathing is only slight, but Fitz glances at her anyway, in between his hands working on their own project.

“Did she?” His muscles flex and tense under her observations, but Jemma no longer cares about the spiraled scars that stretch towards the sun. Instead, she worries about their roots – the deep tissue that he hides from her, protected by stiff muscles and evasive eyes.

Jemma bites her lip, letting her thumb drag gently across his shoulder before both arms fall to her side. She still stands facing his shoulder and his profile, his flittering gaze unsteady. “Fitz.”

His name shocks his system and when he finally looks at her, completely and utterly, the electricity crackling behind his gaze burns her heart. But even despite the intensity of his gaze, despite how hard he tries to remain impassive, the broken pieces of a soul pool behind his eyes, and he begins to cry even before she has a chance to completely embrace him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, broken voice whispering into her shoulder. She runs her hand down his spine, wrapping herself around him so that her heart rests beside his. Jemma wants to grab the shadows threatening him and scatter them to the winds, but she can’t and he doesn’t need her to. So she holds them together with fragile threads, ignoring his steady sobs of, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” that linger in her hair even after she tells him apologies are unnecessary.

They end up on the cold tile floor; she leans against the corner desk, his head in her lap, her hand kneading his curls into haphazard flowers. His tears dry on his face, hiccups vibrating against her knees. With one hand curled into hers, Fitz only breaks the steady silence to turn and look directly at her.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, ripped soul crawling out his lips in soft tones. Jemma shakes her head viciously, once to say no, twice to yell _please_. But Fitz can’t hear her anymore, not fully. “I’d understand if – “

Jemma pulls on his hair, gentle enough to not hurt him further but harsh enough that he stops speaking. “No,” she says, because that’s all she muster from her sore throat and dry eyes. The shadows in his face recede slightly, but the fire in her chest flickers from a lack of oil, dripping from her window to his, slowly draining the light filling her blood.

When Fitz sits up, Jemma rests her head on his shoulder and he squeezes her hand.

She’s so tired.

 


End file.
